Donald Glover had quite a career transformation over the past few years. For so long, he was known by his stage name Childish Gambino. During this era of his career, he had a hard time being taken seriously by the masses despite a charismatic rapping style and a clear sense of individualism. However, his recent success has seen him do a full 180 and his visibility in multiple different avenues has seen him earn a highly impressive net worth of $35 million. Here’s how he did it.
pop culture
What Is Donald Glover’s Net Worth?
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
'This is America'
YouTube
Glover saw an immense amount of success when he released his single ‘This Is America’ in May of 2018. It made him a household name. At the time of writing, the video has amassed just over 683 million views on YouTube. Assuming that his channel has a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) of $1, Social Blade’s YouTube Money Calculator says that the video could have earned Glover about $673k. Add on the tens of thousands he likely made from the song’s hundreds of millions of streams, and it’s been a very lucrative record for him. That summer, Donald performed on the This Is America Tour which consisted of a few dozen shows. Box Office score data from approximately 15 of the shows including New York’s Madison Square Garden and London’s O2 Arena state that Glover grossed roughly $16.3 million.
However, more money, more problems, as they say. That same year, Glover got into a dispute with indie label Glassnote Entertainment who he signed with seven years prior. He claimed they owed him streaming royalties and had been miscalculating their payments to him. What the suit revealed was that the label had paid Glover $8 million since 2011 and planned to pay him $2 million that fall.
From Childish Gambino to Donald Glover
Rich Fury/Getty Images for iHeartMedia
There’s a reason that he’s known largely as Donald Glover as opposed to Childish Gambino now. The man wears so many hats and has shown such an array of talent that he constantly gets comparisons to Jamie Foxx. The Hip-Hop star has seen incredible success in his acting career which started in the mid-2000s and has since seen him in roles in huge hits such as Spider-Man: Homecoming, Solo: A Star Wars Story and the 2019 remake of The Lion King. Though his role as Aaron Davis in Spider-Man: Homecoming wasn’t quite the lead, he did introduce a unique audience to the movie which likely earned him a sizeable sum, especially considering the film did $880.2 million at the Box Office with a budget of $175 million. In Solo: A Star Wars Story he had a larger role. That film earned $393.2 million at the Box Office. Finally, in The Lion King, he graduated to be able to play the legendary role of Simba. Naturally, the Disney remake blew all of his other acting ventures out of the water, breaking all kinds of records and earning a whopping $1.657 billion at the Box Office. Just for his voice acting role here, Glover undoubtedly earned millions of dollars.
Of course, Glover also has his own show, Atlanta, which lives on FX. As well as playing the role of Earn, he is a creator, writer, director, and executive producer. He is estimated to have made around $75k per episode for the first season, supposedly settling for a smaller sum upfront for larger payments on the backend. He bet on himself and it’s been paying off. The season two premiere of the show pulled in 2.7 million viewers and its next season is highly anticipated.
The consistency in so many fields has made Donald Glover a name that brands want to be associated with. In 2018, Glover signed a two year deal with Adidas which saw him release three collaborations in the Nizza, the Lacombe, and the Continental 80. They might not have had the hype of Kanye’s Yeezys, but we’re sure that the deal contributed greatly to Glover’s fat pockets.
Seeing how far Donald Glover has gotten up to this point has been fascinating and if his trajectory continues, his net worth will certainly do the same.
Did you like this article?
